My dad didn't pick up when I called his cell at the hospital this morning. I eventually talked to a nurse who said he couldn't remember the pin to unlock the phone. My dad does not have memory issues and while sometimes selective he remembers with steel. I told the nurse this wasn't normal for him but maybe he had that chemo fog my girlfriend has from treatment over time. Christina did me yet another kindness and picked up tamal en casuela from the Cuban place and I took it to him that afternoon. He had some and let me set up the iPad so he could watch baseball but had trouble with certain words and at the end of the night told me "La computadora no esta buena" and tapped on the right side of his head. "Maneja despacio y cuidado con las curvas" was the last complete sentence he spoke to me.
05-16-21
One Saturday you walk into your dad's hospital room and as you touch the skin of his liver spotted forehead and wonder if it's been like that or if they're not cleaning him you realize you hadn't visited for a couple days not because you didn't want to argue with or upset him but because this might be the beginning of losing the man who chipped and carved at you till you were mostly useful withstood the barrage of your youth and then waited how did he know to tell you he was proud over the phone as you sat in the grass of your front yard with your two year old boy in the warm spring sun thinking oh this will be forever.
05-05-21
I had something good to write about maybe it was about my dad in the hospital but then I went to a restaurant because the kitchen is dismantled BECAUSE CONSTRUCTION and it's supposed to be a steak place but there was no salt or flavor on the meat so here we are.
05-04-22
The construction people
are here
and the owner doesn’t
like me much anymore
because I got mad
that he’s not doing his job.
Welp.
Hurry up
finish this shit
and get the fuck on back
to ruining
more people’s lives
with the betterment
of their homes.
05-03-21
My father
looks so small
under the covers
in that hospital bed.
You know the ones
very wide
with the adjustable plastic
barriers on the side.
He shivers
and says no
when I ask if he wants
another cover.
05-02-21
Sometimes I wonder why Amazon doesn't have a search result for Tape Measure That Can't Be Misplaced - For Stupid People.
04-25-21
Dear Muscle Relaxer, I know you can't read this but my lower back says thanks, baby and it would eat you out so good, Muscle Relaxer, you would be like damn I didn't know a lower back rolled like that.
04-23-21
Construction. Lot of stuff at work. My dad. Son and Woman. I usually write at night. But this week by the time I hit the bed I just want to watch a YouTube vid or read a comic and let the darkness skullfuck my eyelids down down down. They replaced the AC today. There’s dust everywhere, man. And that machine is blowing it into my every single hole.
04-20-21
My friend asked what is my Knight's Code and it doesn't make a little sense to me because a knight seems a militaristic sort of fellow yet we hold knights in this regard kind of like Jedi but they got trickconscripted into a galactic war. But I believe in Don’t skip in lines. When out in the world be mindful of how you affect others. It matters when people say they are affected by certain things but we should also strive to be strong and weather the hard things. Know that life’s not easy. Try to look for the beauty. Let bad people fail but try to be stronger than them and help them sometimes but don’t enable them too much. Try not to judge on the wrong silly things. Try not to give up especially on you. Get sad. Walk away. Beat yourself up a little. Always try to come back.
04-16-21
When I was in college my dad would never come home after 9pm or so. One Saturday night it's 9:30 and he's nowhere and this is before cell phones so I call the golf course where he works and there's nothing. Eventually one of his friends rings me up to tell me my dad has been arrested but everything is fine. There's a buddy he sells golf balls to and he's a lawyer just show up at the jail tomorrow to pick him up. So I have this bomb that goes off in my head if I get a call from my dad too late in the evening. And these days he calls me late just to tell me stories he forgot to relay about his day at the cancer clinic. Tonight, it was about a lady that takes requests and sings to patients and he reenacted it with his gravelly screechy voice how she sang "Besame Mucho" but he was so happy and I wasn't scared for a bit.